The first guy ended up being the best one. Didn't take the game-ending risk that the others did. I didn't think he was that bad anyway.

Yes. Some people on Facebook's Quiz Discussion Group were bemoaning the general knowledge level of the contestants (as you'd expect from a group of quizzing enthusiasts, some of whom seem quite bitter about having applied for Millionaire and gotten rejected), but in fact he played the format right and ended up going home with the most money out of all the contestants.

I like the new feature where you get to set the old £32k safety net at whichever question you want, before you see the question. I'm not aware of anyone suggesting it before but I think it's a good idea.

They now have six contestants in the studio rather than ten. Meh. It's easy to assume this is for budgetary reasons or cutbacks or whatever, but I think it's just that someone realised they only use two or three (maybe sometimes four) contestants in a show, so there had never been any good reason to have as many as ten. You might keep a totally useless but harmless feature if it was so important to the show's brand that you couldn't really change it now, but too-many-unused-contestants-on-Millionaire never really achieved that iconic left-half-of-the-Countdown-clock status.

The new "Ask The Host" lifeline. Not sure I like that one. At some point Clarkson is going to express a preference for answer A and the contestant will lose a lot of money because the answer was B. Obviously the contestant is choosing to play the question, anything the host says is purely advisory and the contestants will have been informed of that, but I can see it making things awkward. Then again, "Ask The Host" is in addition to the three original lifelines so it's not as if the contestant can complain that it's been made any harder than before.

This brings me to the main thing I'm surprised about - that they kept Phone-a-Friend. When Millionaire first started on 4th September 1998, Phone-a-Friend would have seemed a solid idea. But on that same day, Google was founded (yes, really) and now everyone has all the knowledge in the world at their fingertips.

The US version got rid of Phone-a-Friend years ago for this reason, and I'd assumed the UK reboot would do the same. Instead they've kept it, but all the phone-a-friends now have someone from the Millionaire production team sitting in their house making sure they're using nothing more than their own brainpower to assist the contestant. This seems an awful lot of trouble to go to - you've got six contestants, multiplied by the number of phone-a-friends each of them has, and you've got to have that many people go and sit in a house for a few hours and in all probability not have to do anything. Or do they bring the friends into the studio and happen not to mention they've done that, which would seem a lot easier?

On tonight's show, I was amazed at what they'd picked for the £16,000 question. "According to the Highway Code, what shape is the standard sign giving the order to 'Stop'?", the options being Pentagon, Hexagon, Heptagon or Octagon. I'd have said that was more of a £2,000 question. But the contestant didn't know it, his phone-a-friend didn't know it, and even Jeremy Clarkson wasn't sure, so have I just overestimated how common that knowledge is?

Finally, whoever is in charge of the typography for the on-screen graphics has got a lot to answer for. How do you even do that accidentally?

Clarkson is at least making it very clear how confident he is about his answers, and is clearly terrified of getting into the position you described. Not a lifeline to keep in future if the host isn't known for their general knowledge.

I thought Clarkson was warming into the role nicely yesterday. Having the first contestant who was clearly prepared to engage with him helped, but with both of them he was more friendly and encouraging than you'd necessarily expect. Will be interesting to see if that continues if they get another run of less successful contestants.

On tonight's show, I was amazed at what they'd picked for the £16,000 question. "According to the Highway Code, what shape is the standard sign giving the order to 'Stop'?", the options being Pentagon, Hexagon, Heptagon or Octagon. I'd have said that was more of a £2,000 question. But the contestant didn't know it, his phone-a-friend didn't know it, and even Jeremy Clarkson wasn't sure, so have I just overestimated how common that knowledge is?

As a non-driver, I would have been sure that it was B or D as I know it has 2 lines of symmetry. My gut feeling would be octagonal (and having looked it up, this appears to be right, unless I'm looking at US signs) but I wouldn't be sure.

I'm quite enjoying the new format for the reasons Graeme said. I was also amazed by everybody's lack of stop sign knowledge, just because I thought the symbol was so ubiquitous not just on the roads but on other signs, in software, etc etc. "When the fun stops STOP" and so on.

I’m not a huge fan of the two major changes. And what really annoys me is how the music cues are slightly changed from the original (for example, when the contestant gets the £1,000 question right, when the lights go back down the £2-£4k cue, not the £1-£2k cue, plays). That said, it’s good to see they’ve ditched the changes that were made in 2007 altogether.

I thought Clarkson hadn't been too bad as host, but that howler with the ibex question was unforgivable. As examples of What Not To Do As A Quiz Show Host go, saying (exact words) "I'm not even going to look at the screen" before confidently telling the contestant they've got the answer right must be somewhere near the top. Especially if that means you tell the contestant they've just won £32,000 then have to tell them that they've lost £15,000.

I thought Clarkson hadn't been too bad as host, but that howler with the ibex question was unforgivable. As examples of What Not To Do As A Quiz Show Host go, saying (exact words) "I'm not even going to look at the screen" before confidently telling the contestant they've got the answer right must be somewhere near the top. Especially if that means you tell the contestant they've just won £32,000 then have to tell them that they've lost £15,000.

As you say, a completely unforgivable mistake. Chris Tarrant didn't make this sort of error even once in nearly 600 episodes.

I don't think Clarkson was a particularly good host, either, he seemed bored with proceedings during large parts of it.

I thought Clarkson hadn't been too bad as host, but that howler with the ibex question was unforgivable. As examples of What Not To Do As A Quiz Show Host go, saying (exact words) "I'm not even going to look at the screen" before confidently telling the contestant they've got the answer right must be somewhere near the top. Especially if that means you tell the contestant they've just won £32,000 then have to tell them that they've lost £15,000.

As you say, a completely unforgivable mistake. Chris Tarrant didn't make this sort of error even once in nearly 600 episodes.

I don't think Clarkson was a particularly good host, either, he seemed bored with proceedings during large parts of it.

Shocking they allowed someone to wear a racist slogan on their top, clearly visible at 00:57

But yeah I also hadn't watched and so thanks for the link Gevin, it's absolutely terrible. I had kind of assumed he had said "well that's definitely the right answer, let's confirm it" rather than actually straight up told him in such an authoritative way it was correct as if it was the official ruling. Awkward as you like.